Owning a home is one of the most basic human instincts there is. It makes us feel secure, safe, and happy. Sure, the bills that come with it can be a challenge, but knowing you have a warm, dry, homely place to lay your head is an enormous comfort for your family.
Whether you’re buying, building, or renting your home, the biggest decisions are based on location and style. It’s all about where you live, and what kind of house you live in. Do you choose a chic, urban apartment or a quieter suburb residence with a yard?
Younger people who are newly in the workforce and are early in their careers will probably choose an apartment. It gives them an opportunity to be in the heart of the action, meeting lots of new people, enjoying a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Plus, many apartments are serviced, which reduces the worry about menial tasks and chores.
Families tend to look at things a bit differently, especially if they have young kids. Once you get to that stage in life, your priorities shift and you start to make your household decisions in an entirely different way.
For one thing, privacy is a huge factor when you have a family. You want to have your own little haven where nobody can bother you. No loud music from the other side of your wall, no strangers walking past your door in the middle of the night, no potentially claustrophobic communal spaces. You want your own little corner of paradise, and having a fenced-in yard and some distance from your neighbours helps you do that.
Many families want to give their children the kind of wholesome childhood that they enjoyed. They want their kids to have a chance to play outside, ride bikes, learn skills like surfing or jump rope or street sports. The might even want to teach them more practical skills like gardening or let them beat the summer heat with a sprinkler or an inflatable swimming pool.
Having some small yard space gives the kids room to play, and allows the adults an ideal area for a cookout, some hot dogs or home-made burgers and a cold beer, some friendly fraternising with the neighbours, all while giving everyone the boundaries they need. Yards are great for holiday festivities and birthday parties too.
One of the best ways to teach kids about love, affection, and responsibility is to get them a suitable pet. It could be a cat, a dog, a mouse, a turtle, maybe even a chicken. Pets love the outdoors and are a lot easier to clean after if they have some external space to burn their energy and do their business.
When you have bouncy little ones, having a few feet of landscaped greenery or well-paved yard is a huge help. They can run around with their cats, dogs, and two-legged playmates, giving them a chance to bond, develop their physical strength, acquire social skills, and best of all, tire them out so that’s it’s easier to put them to bed once the day is over.
A lot of parents spend most of their days in bland corporate settings full of tiny cubicles and glass partitions and fluorescent lighting. They might have to make a long, gruesome commute home through rush hour traffic. When they get home, spending a few hours in a nice, quiet yard where they can breathe in the night air and watch the stars can make everything better.
Of course, they could probably do this on the veranda of a classy apartment, but there’s nothing like settling into the beauty of manicured nature after a day of toiling in the corporate jungle. For people in a situation like that, then a yard – any yard, can feel like a little piece of heaven.